Ovadya Yosef is really a lot like Andrew Dice Clay. He’s cranky, obnoxious, politically correct and not nearly as funny as he thinks he is. Every time he digs out a new stand up routine about the Holocaust or women or how voting for Shas will get into heaven, it just flops. But that never keeps him down, probably because he’s got a lot of people that think he has pull with G-d. Newsflash, if Ovadya Yosef had pull with G-d, he wouldn’t need to worship at the Golden Calf of Shimon Peres. But here’s that foul mouthed old man’s latest wacky comedy routine.
“Women should make hamin and not deal with matters of Torah,” the spiritual leader of Shas, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, said in a speech to supporters on Saturday night. Yosef made the statement in the context of a major Halachic campaign he is currently engaged in as to when women should recite the blessing over the Shabbat candles.
Many prominent Ashkenazi rabbis, along with a few Sephardic sources, have ruled that women should say the blessing after lighting the candles. However, according to Yosef, the blessings should be said before the candles have been kindled, similar to other blessings.
Yosef blasted the opposing view, saying it was based on the opinion of “a few stupid women. A woman’s knowledge is only in sewing,” he ridiculed. “Women should find other jobs and make hamin (cholent) but not deal with matters of Torah.”
In addition, he admonished women for following in the steps of their mothers in the order of the recitation of the blessing instead of adhering to his opinion. “It has to be announced that women should not listen to the voice of their mothers or grandmothers not to continue with this mistake,” he warned.
Yes don’t listen to your mothers. Listen to the guy who has a direct tradition from who again? We go from treating minchagim as holy except when they’re passed down by women? Minchag avoteinu beyodeinu but not minchag imoteinu? Well that’s a problem because a whole lot of our minchagim are indeed passed down by women.
Besides if we toss out the “halacha” that women made, we’re going to need to rework tznius and nidah, especially nidah big time. You can’t have it both ways. You can either respect minchag or toss it aside. You can either respect the tradition and the customs women have adopted or toss it all overboard.
But it’s nice to see how much respect a menuval like Ovadya Yosef has for women. Remember when the Bnos Zelaphad came to Moshe Rabbeinu and he told them to shut up and go cook something because women don’t know anything about halacha? Oh wait, Moshe Rabbeinu was an actual leader instead of a corrupt cranky old man.
My recommendation is that Ovadya Yosef should stick to cooking. He’s no good as a Rav, which requires actual love for Am Yisrael and actually caring about their welfare and fearing G-d. He’s no good at politics since he’s busy destroying the country to put some shekels in his own institutions. He should try cooking. How badly could he screw it up?
In honor of him I vote to create the Ovadya Yosef Crock Pot where we can stick every stupid and ugly thing he says and leave it over Shabbat.
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You talk to about me so?
Your comments are over-simplistic. Rav Ovadia comes from a different time. He also knows Torah far far better than you infer in your roast above. People who are critical in this fashion often point out his cultural background rather than his Torah prowess-which is a oversight.
http://maran1.com/yazdim.php